Mississippians near two weeks without power after winter storm
[February 07, 2026]
By SOPHIE BATES and JEFF MARTIN
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — Nearly two weeks after an ice storm knocked out
power to her home, Barbara Bishop still finds herself trying to flip the
lights on and looking in her fridge for food that has since spoiled.
Bishop, 79, and her 85-year-old husband, George Bishop, live in a rural
area near Oxford, Mississippi, where ice-coated trees snapped in half,
bringing down power lines and making roads nearly impassable.
After the storm hit, the Bishops took in their son, granddaughter and
two children, whose homes lost both power and water.
The family endured days of bitter cold with nothing but a gas heater to
keep them warm. For a few days, they lost water.
“It’s just been one of those times you just have to grit, grit your
teeth and bare it,” Bishop said.
Nearly 20,000 customers remained without power in northern Mississippi
on Friday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.
That is down from about 180,000 homes and businesses without power in
Mississippi shortly after the storm struck late last month.
Lafayette County, where Oxford is located, had the most remaining
outages of any county on Friday, with about 4,200 customers without
power, followed by Tippah County with about 3,500. Panola, Yalobusha and
Tishomingo counties all had more than 2,000 customers without power.
After days of bitter cold, temperatures in Oxford reached 70 degrees on
Friday, but the chunks of ice still littered the ground in shaded areas.
Downed trees had been gathered into large piles on the sides of roads,
some burned and still smoldering. While much of the worst damage had
been cleared, in some places, power lines still hung low over roads and
laid strewn about in parking lots. Everywhere, tree limbs dangled
precariously.
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Fallen tree limbs covered roadsides in Oxford, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026
in Oxford, Ms. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
Across the street from the Bishops, Russ Jones and his wife have no
electricity or water. For days, they used five-gallon buckets filled
with water to flush toilets, cooked on their gas stove and stayed
warm by their fireplace.
“It’s been a shock to the system,” Jones said, adding that he and
his wife began staying with friends who have power a few days ago.
On Friday, Jones’ yard was teaming with volunteers from Eight Days
of Hope, a nonprofit that responds to natural disasters. The
volunteers cleared snapped tree limbs and hauled away a large tree
that had fallen in Jones’ backyard.
The organization arrived days after the storm and has helped dozens
of homeowners clean up their yards and patch damaged roofs. It has
also served more than 16,000 free meals.
Jones said it was a relief to know he had one less thing on his
plate. When a volunteer handed him a free T-shirt and a blanket for
his wife, he held back tears.
“It's just beyond anything I could ever imagine,” he said.
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